Professor Gerdes is an experimental particle physicist and cosmologist whose research addresses basic questions about the composition and evolution of the universe. What is the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion rate of the universe to accelerate? What is the nature of the dark matter that makes up more than 80% of the matter in the universe? He carries out his research using the tools of both optical astronomy and particle physics. As a member of the Dark Energy Survey collaboration, he is using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4-meter Blanco telescope in the Chilean Andes to measure the effects of dark energy and dark matter on the growth and evolution of the universe over the past eight billion years of cosmic time. In addition, he participates in the PandaX experiment, a deep-underground detector designed to directly detect the interactions of dark matter particles with a metric ton of liquid xenon. He was a member of the team that discovered the top quark at Fermilab. He has also received many awards for undergraduate teaching, including the university's highest teaching award, an Arthur F. Thurnau professorship.